Every now and then I’ll shoot a session that I just can’t live without in my permanent album collection. I joke with Jordan that one day I’m going to have a library filled with albums/books I’ve desiged. So today I thought I’d share with you the newest member of my collection: Snow White. Remember her? Well, here’s how she looks in print.

And here’s the story:

And a note for you photographers. This is a WHCC album, 40 pages on watercolor paper. Gorgeous!

I decided you get two blog posts today to make up for my lack of posting this week. But I have an excuse…kinda. It’s been my birthday week! I’m one whole quarter century old (aka. 25 years). I’ve been offically spoiled by my husband, parents, and siblings. And my sisters are both making me a cake for our party tonight. YUM. I love all the good cooks in the family. But I wanted to share one of my favorite birthday presents, and this came from my daughter last Saturday. She actually requested a photo shoot and then followed through with the most precious of cooperations. Below is the album I designed from our little shoot. I can’t wait to see it printed. I’m going to try out WHCC new flush mount albums on watercolor paper. This will be a 40-page 6×6 book. Hopefully small and adorable. Seriously, these pictures melt my heart, especially the one directly below.

I forgot how much I loved shooting this wedding Just had to share their album spreads…

I wondered realisitically how many album pages it would take to tell a complete wedding story, including engagement + bridal shoots… Nicole and Glenn’s came in at 78. I love it! And I’m sure you haven’t forgotten these two. (Neither has Utah Bride and Groom Magazine… check out their feature from last Friday on this very album HERE). With the millions of preceeding blog posts featuring all their sessions I don’t know how you could. BUT I thought you still might enjoy seeing how it all comes together in the end…in the WEDDING ALBUM!

I thought it would be fun to share this today since tomorrow is THE big day for these two! Hopefully all of Kelsey and Ryan’s guests will enjoy this interactive guest book at their reception. I’ll for sure have to stalk the sign in table to overhear any comments…good or bad. I want to get a feel for how something like this is received. I wish I had had something like this at my wedding. How fun will it be for them to not only look back at their engagement session, but also to read all the thoughts/advice/fun musing from those they love best!

I tweaked these templates from Designaglow. They even featured this book on the Designaglow blog. It’s always fun to submit images of how you use their products because they send you a $75 shopping spree is they find your submission blog worthy. And if you’re not too design/photoshop savy, this is the place to shop! I typically don’t use templates when designing albums because I have my own little system which is faster and suits me perfectly, but it would’ve taken me too long to think of all these fun questions + the little design elements included in this packet that I couldn’t resist. With this shopping spree, I bought a few issues of the Designaglow “magazine” because I love to read it, but don’t love to pay for it.

Can’t wait for tomorrow! I’m sure I’ll have a peak to share with you this weekend

I’ve decided to simplify my album offerings this year both for my clients and myself. Tia & Mike’s original album style is one I’ve cut, not because I didn’t love it, but because it required me to assemble it and I have ruined SO many albums this year in the process I can’t afford to offer this album anymore ;( Lol. It really is silly I struggle so much when putting them together, but I am a professional photographer, not a professional mounter. So anyway, I’ve always loved their Black Tie session and decided it needed a place amoung my new samples so I thought I’d share the spreads with you. The cover is a wrap around image, so the pattern part of the above spread will be on the back, the text on the spine, etc.

Enjoy

(Side note for photographers…I’m planning on printing this through WHCC as one of their new albums with the watercolor paper…I haven’t seen one in person yet, but am imagining them to be beautiful. At least I’ve got my fingers crossed.)

I decided to put together a post of some fun places you can look for my work in the next little while. Of course I love sharing my sessions on this blog, but it’s even cooler when someone else shares my work. SO here we go:

1. I just picked up a copy of this year’s Utah Bride & Groom Magazine. I’m a definite fan of this magazing for many reasons. This issue is, I hope, only the beginning to my wedding photography in print. But for now, Tia & Michael get props for making it into the “Album”.

I’ve actually been featured in this album before, but I was the bride that time…

2. I received a phone call the other day from my canvas lab, Simply Canvas, asking if I would mind if they made a duplicate copy of my 36×54 studio gallery wrap canvas of Andressa to take around with them to all the tradeshows this year. Ummmmm…let me check. YES. I’m so hoping this will be one of the canvases they hang in their WPPI tradeshow booth this year because my husband and I will be in attendance at this conference.

I attended the tradeshow last year for the first time and loved it! Not just because of all the great speakers and vendors, but because I got to see one of my albums at the Finao booth.

And this year,

3. Finao will be trecking around to all their tradeshows with not one, but THREE of my albums. I can’t WAIT to see how they make them up. They changed my album cover last year to feature one of their newer fabrics and I’m guessing they may do the same this year. SO if you’re headed to WPPI this year and are a fan of Finao, or would like to be (they have the most diverse and fun offerings by FAR), look for these three albums among their collection.

Here’s some of my favorite spreads from this one.

I’m hoping they keep this one as is because I love this canvas cover. And I loved this shoot.

You’ve seen this one before, way back when… It’s from Analeis’s maternity session. Ya, she’s hot especially when prenant.

4. Here’s a clue to what’s up this (hopefully) this Friday…can you guess which bride they’ll feature?

And now for a little background about me you may not have known.

I am actually a writer.

And a hand model…lol

Okay, so I have a degree in journalism, and was all set to conquer the magazine world by filling it with text, rather than pictures. The summer after I graduated (2006) from the University of Utah I got an internship at Utah Bride and Groom Magazine. I absolutely LOVED writing for them. And the fun things was, they loved me. So I got to write “extra” stuff that not all their interns get to write. In fact, I even had my own full length feature on…guess what…wedding photography.

Now at the time I wasn’t a photographer. But I was interested in it. So the editor let me come along on many of the magazine photo shoots and I loved it. I joked about being a hand model because I was at the “proposal” shoot and had the only free pair of hands there. So they shot me putting together the place card project. At the very least, it made writing that “to do” pretty easy. For the most part, my writing was just short little descriptions of this or that, plus many, many captions. I will never take all those info jam packed captions for granted again. They’re so time consuming and not at all interesting. But I’m sure as a bride, you do appreciate knowing where to get that dress or this trinket, etc.

The other task I had as intern was to put together the “album” section of the magazine. This meant I had to search the internet for the best wedding photography Utah had to offer. I do believe this is where my wedding photography career began. I had no idea the variety and level of wonderfulness so many photographers were shooting at. I picked my favorites and have been following their blogs ever since. And now I get to be in that album, hopefully as someone else’s favorite. And so it all comes full circle.

I do miss writing and hope that one day I’ll find a place for that in my life again. Right now, I’ve got more than enough on my plate. But I thought for fun I’d share a little something I wrote in college. It’s a humorous piece about the day I bought my wedding dress. Those of you who’ve been supporting me for quite some time now have probably already read this. But I know there are some of you who didn’t even know I could write. So, please take a minute and enjoy how silly I used to be:

The morning I went shopping for my dress, I first stopped in to visit my boyfriend in the hospital. Only problem was, he wasn’t my only boyfriend. I had one on a mission too. I wasn’t engaged to either, but figured I’d be with one by the end of the year. And I couldn’t pass up a good sale… and so the story starts…

Click HERE to read “Cascading Roses”

(Ella was feeling left out when I was taking all the pictures of the albums on this little side table… she wanted to “cheese”)